I think the intention was pointing out that reduce implies you consume only the things you need, while refuse means you'll deliberately refuse wasteful things even if you need them.

For example, smarthome lighting. The lightbulbs could be dumb, and all the smarts could live in the lightswitches, that would reduce waste. Conversely, the traditional smarthome lighting approach is very wasteful, every lightbulb is a small computer, and who knows what percent of the discarded lightbulbs gets recycled.